Sometimes dismissed as linguistically epiphenomenal, inflectional paradigms are, in reality, the interface of a language's morphology with its syntax and semantics. Drawing on abundant evidence from a wide range of languages (French, Hua, Hungarian, Kashmiri, Latin, Nepali, Noon, Old Norse, Sanskrit, Turkish, Twi and others), Stump examines a variety of mismatches between words' content and form, including morphomic patterns, defectiveness, overabundance, syncretism, suppletion, deponency and polyfunctionality. He demonstrates that such mismatches motivate a new grammatical architecture in which two kinds of paradigms are distinguished: content paradigms, which determine word forms' syntactic distribution and semantic interpretation, and form paradigms, which determine their inflectional realization. In this framework, the often nontrivial linkage between a lexeme's content paradigm and its stems' form paradigm is the nexus at which incongruities of content and form are resolved. Stump presents clear and precise analyses of a range of morphological phenomena in support of this theoretical innovation.

This book explains inflectional paradigms' role as the grammatical nexus at which mismatches between words' content and form are resolved.

About the Author
Gregory Stump is a professor of linguistics at the University of Kentucky. His principal research area is the theory and typology of complex systems of inflectional morphology.

Reviews
'Inflectional paradigms is an excellent book combining clarity of exposition, rich empirical coverage and theoretical sophistication. ... I would like to recommend Stump's new book to all interested in morphological typology and theories of syntax-morphology interface, including not only linguists of a more theoretical stance, but typologists and descriptive linguists as well.' Peter M. Arkadiev, The Linguist List



Book Information
ISBN 9781107460850
Author Gregory Stump
Format Paperback
Page Count 239
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Weight(grams) 450g
Dimensions(mm) 228mm * 152mm * 17mm